There’s a few things I want to note before getting to the decklist. First, I had to figure out what type of deck this is. Is it Aggro? Control? Combo? Or is it some mix between 2 or 3 of those types? I settled on calling this a creature based combo-control deck, and once I did, it became much more clear how to build and play the deck. I do have reasons for not going aggro, but I’ll discuss that more when we get to Jaraga Warcaller and Overrun. The second thing I had to figure out were the “high risk, high reward” cards (HRHR for short). There are a number of cards in here that are generally good cards, and they do usually pay off, but they do come with risks, and when those risks don’t pay off, it can be devastating for you. For those of you who don’t know my playstyle, I like to minimize HRHR cards, and that won’t be more apparent than in this deck.
Creatures – 28
3 Elvish Visionary
1 Fauna Shaman
2 Thornweald Archer
1 Carven Caruatid
1 Eternal Witness
1 Spawnwrithe
3 Wood Elves
2 Briarpack Alpha
2 Vengevine
1 Yeva, Nature’s Herald
3 Acidic Slime
1 Stingerfling Spider
3 Thragtusk
1 Soul of the Harvest
1 Gaea’s Revenge
2 Pelakka Wurm
Other Spells – 8
2 Giant Growth
2 Beast Within
2 Erratic Portal
2 Natural Order
Land – 25
25 Forest
General Strategy: Play the early utility elves and set up for controlling the board with your creatures when turns 4-5 come. From there, you can use a card advantage engine with the Portal, Natural Order for something huge and start swinging, or drop threats like Yeva, Briarpack, Slime, and Thragtusk to stabilize the board and possibly start swinging (depending on the situation).
A lot of the more detailed stuff will involve the card analysis. But before that, I’m going to do something a little bit different for this. Since there are many ways to build/play this deck, I’m going to separate the card analysis into “packages.” The packages will be: Elf aggro, Control, Combo, 6 mana+ creatures, and the core. I’m going to start with the core of the deck. Keep in mind, this is not a list of auto-includes, but it is close. First, I’ll list what I consider the core cards, and you’ll see where potential deviations are for some of these, but for the most part, these are cards that can be included in almost any build of the deck. The number you include may vary, and sometimes you may not want any of that particular card.
First, I’m going to list the core cards before analyzing them. It will make a bit easier than scrolling through the first 10 or so card evaluations to figure out what all is being considered core to the deck.
Elvish Visionary
Fauna Shaman
Thornweald Archers
Carven Caryatid
Eternal Witness
Wood Elves
Eratic Portal
Roaring Primadox
Vengevine
Yeva, Nature’s Herald
Beast Within
Elvish Visionary – Very much auto-include. It creates a chump blocker, draws you a card, goes great with the bounce engine of Portal and Primadox. Don’t be afraid to trade this early on, you have 3 of them. It’s important to get into the mid-late game. Visionary is also great at turning hands you would otherwise mulligan into great hands. 2 lands and a Visionary means I’ll almost always keep that hand.
Wood Elves – Another main engine card. It accelerates us into 5 mana on turn 4, which opens up various possibilities. It’s also great on turn 3 if you have a Giant Growth in hand, because you can cast it and have mana open to cast Giant Growth if need be. Land thinning and accelerating is always welcome in green decks.
Fauna Shaman – I like this card. 2 mana for a 2/2, it’ll probably get targeted with removal quickly. If it doesn’t, you can dump your high cost creatures that you don’t need for one that you do need and are able to cast sooner. Or you can dump Vengevine, who you can bring back into play for free later on anyways. Don’t feel bad about trading it early on against aggro, you really need to make it to the mid-late game against them.
Vengevine – 4/3 with haste for 4 mana with an ability that revives itself from the graveyard if you cast 2 creatures. That makes it good for aggro, control, and combo. It helps slower builds put pressure on decks like mill. Against control, reviving it means card advantage for you, and more pressure to put on your opponent. And it fits right in with a Portal/Primodox combo engine.
Eternal Witness – 3 mana and you get a 2/1 that returns ANY card from your graveyard to your hand. It’s an auto-include. Emphasis on the any part because you can return Natural Order for more shenanigans with that.
Yeva, Nature’s Herald – It has flash and gives all your stuff flash, so it’s great for keeping your opponent on edge. With its 4/5 body, it can be a nice surprise blocker. (Although, given the creature amount of this deck, if my opponent was playing this deck and didn’t play something on turn 4 and left 4 mana open, it’s obvious they’re planning this or Briarpack.
Eratic Portal – The main engine card. Bounce your Visionary, Wood Elves, Slime, Thragtusk, etc. and get their effects again. Bounce your opponent’s tokens if they have no mana open, and they’re gone forever. Bounce your opponent’s other crap and create some nice tempo advantage.
Roaring Primadox – I consider this a HRHR card, and that’s why I excluded it. Let me explain what I mean. I can play Primadox, and this opens up a strategy my opponent can utilize, in which they destroy all my other creatures, so that I’ll be forced to bounce the Primadox back to my hand. I won’t get to attack with it, I won’t get to abuse its effect. And in some cases, if I don’t have anything else to play, I’ll be forced to play this again, just to act as a one turn 4/4 blocker. Massive tempo disadvantage, which really hurts a creature heavy deck. I don’t like how this card enables my opponent to employ such a strategy, hence I cut it. Of course, if you get to abuse its effect and draw extra cards off of Visionary or something, it’s awesome. If you do run it, only 1-2 max.
Thornweald Archer – Cheap, reach, and deathtouch. These things make it great for any build.
Acidic Slime – I run 3 of these, less controlling builds might run 2 (or less). It’s great. It kills problematic enchantments/artifacts, and reusing it means you can employ a land-denial strategy. Great tool against some decks that are known for stacking up lots of artifacts/enchantments (Jace, Odric). Deathtouch means it kills any creature it comes in contact with, further helping a control strategy.
Beast Within – “Mega, it’s a great card, it’s BEAST WITHIN, and you’re only running 2?!? Blasphemy!!!” Umm, I have reasons for only running 2. Yes, it’s a great card, yes, it can hit any permanent. Yes, you can hit your own stuff to make a surprise blocker. However, that 3/3 it gives your opponent can be troublesome for this deck. A 3/3 will trade with a lot of stuff, or require me to use a boost from Briarpack or Giant Growth to get rid of early on. With that in mind, this isn’t really a turn 3 card, and I really cringe when I see more than one in my hand at a time. While extra removal is great, what permanents can I not already deal with? 3 Acidic Slimes will take out artifacts, enchantments, and lands. There’s 5 things with deathtouch, the spider and archers can handle flying threats, and Giant Growth/Briarpack are preferable for handling early game threats, since Beast within would only go to replace an early game threat with another early game threat for me to contend with. For those reasons, I find that running 2 is preferable, because the extra removal is very welcome.
ELF AGGRO PACKAGE
Jaraga Warcaller – This card almost made me make an aggro deck, almost. There’s no problems with the Warcaller itself, but there were 3 main things that made me not make an elf aggro. First, there’s only 1 Jaraga Warcaller and 1 Overrun, which are your finishing cards. That’s not all that consistent. Second, most of your cheap elves will usually die in the early turns due to trying to survive against an aggro onslaught. You’ll be lucky if you have 2-3 by the time you’re ready to drop overrun, that’s hardly a game-winning force. Third, this deck doesn’t have enough cheap elves or acceleration to take advantage of this strategy, imo. Sure, there’s wood elves, but that’s turn 3 acceleration, which is too slow to employ this aggro elf strategy.
Overrun – Again, there’s only 1, and not a lot of cheap creatures that you’ll have floating around by turn 5. Even so, I never seem to find myself able to play overrun for the win, and if I can, it’s much later in the game, and I could win without it. Meanwhile Overrun will just sit in your hand not helping you come back from a bad position, but that’s why it’s with the aggro package and not the control package.
Bond Beetle – Only cool thing to note is that it can add counters to Jaraga Warcaller. Other than that, it’s not really worth it. Bouncing this to add another +1/+1 counter feels like a waste of potential from what the bounce engine could otherwise do. I might consider it if we had another 1-2 copies of Jaraga Warcaller.
Taunting Elf – I removed this from my build for a couple reasons. Kinda like overrun, it’s not going to help me with controlling the field. Most of the time it’ll just sit there until the late game (provided it’s still on the field). Sure, you can do a cute trick with Giant Growth and force your opponent to block and lose their creature, but that’s hardly worth it. It is a cheap creature for Vengevine, but again, that doesn’t make it functional enough for my build. The only other time it’s been useful in my build is when I’m swinging for lethal damage, but by the time I’m in that position, I should have the game won anyways. Hence, it’s an aggro card, and does go nicely with the previously mentioned cards.
Caller of the Claw – If this made elf tokens, I’d take back what I said about not having enough elves for Overrun/Warcaller. The effect can be nice to recover from a sweeper, but it’s not really meant for the control build (but that’s why it’s listed here). For my build, I never seem to have 3 mana open in the early turns to use it effectively, and I could almost care less about losing my cheap elves. They’re meant for utility and chump blocking, and when I get to turn 4-5, I have other, more control oriented cards to be playing.
Manaplasm – It’s not an elf, but it is an aggro card. It goes really nice with Overrun (9/9 with trample, ouch). However, overrun aside, it doesn’t do much defensively without Yeva being able to play stuff as instants, and this thing can just get chump blocked all day long. Even when I played against it online, I didn’t consider it much of a threat, compared to other cards. Without Yeva, I could always see if I’d need to chump block it or not, and being dependent on Yeva in order to employ a blocking strategy is never a good thing.
Yeva’s Forcemage – It’s missing flash, and without it, you can’t do much in terms of defense with this. It can go great with Taunting Elf, but generally, it doesn’t help a control deck’s defense. It is another cheap elf to go for the aggro elf strategy, hence it’s in this package.
Gigantomancer – It’s a natural order target for the aggro build, and turns your army 1/1 elves into 7/7 game winning beasts.
Giant Growth – Ok, I realize I called my deck a combo-control, and this is listed in the aggro section. I did say there was a lot of overlap. For those of you who checked out my Pack Instincts analysis, I like Giant Growth/Primal Bellow, for combat trick purposes.
Spawnwrithe – Speaking of overlap, this has potential for aggro and control, and it’s one of those “kill me now or lose quickly” cards. Trample means it goes well with Giant Growth/Briarpack. The replicating gives you a blocker after you attacked, and this lets you put massive early game pressure on mill, one of the control builds’ iffy matchups.
CONTROL PACKAGE
Briarpack Alpha – Ok, more overlap, but I needed more cards to put in the control section. <_< Anyways, flash and you have a 5/5 blocker, or a 3/3 blocker and boosting another blocker, or boost a Spawnwrithe.
Thragtusk – Three of these in the control build because he can really help stabilize against aggro and burn. Actually, this card is good against all decks. The life gain helps extend your game. With 5 power, he’s an instant 4 turn clock, and the beast token helps against control’s removal. Blue decks won’t really want to bounce this guy either, since you still get the token. The choice came down to a 3rd Thragtusk or Wolfbriar Elemental. The elemental is nice, but I find myself rather having the Thragtusk sooner vs. aggro decks. By the time the elemental can make an army to match aggro’s army, I could hard cast a Pelakka Wurm. Bouncing an elemental with the Portal just feels odd, since that means you’re not tapping out the cast the elemental, and not getting the full effect from it, just so you can bounce it and… not get the full effect from it again? No thanks, I’d rather get a 3/3 for bouncing my guy, and gain another 5 life for recasting it.
Stingerfling Spider – Kills flyers, but only one copy because not all decks have flyers and you can search/bounce this guy when necessary.
COMBO PACKAGE
Momentous Fall – In theory, this card is great. However, I never really find myself with 4 mana left lying around in a creature heavy deck to cast this as an instant, which is the biggest downfall with this. Second, a lot of this deck’s creatures aren’t that big to really get a good use out of this. It has potential, but it’s risky as to whether or not you’ll be able to utilize it.
Wild Pair – This suffers from the same problem as Lurking Predators, but a bit moreso. Again, do I have a turn where I can safely drop this and let it sit there for a turn before getting benefits from it? Around turn 5-7, probably not. In that sense, it’s kinda like a roller coaster. The turn you play it will be a downturn for you, but then after that, you can shoot up faster and gain advantage. My creature lineup also isn’t that friendly towards Wild Pair either.
Lurking Predators – This almost made the cut for me. (The last couple cards were Spawnwrithe, 3rd Thragtusk, Primodial Sage, and this). It can be good, really good, or you could get little effect from it. Of course, you could argue that whatever card is revealed you would have just drawn anyways, and this lets you shift them to the bottom, and that’s a perfectly valid argument. My issue would be playing an enchantment on turn 6 while I’m still trying to stabilize the board, in which case, this can just be a free attack for my opponent, which I may not be able to afford. The payoff is a bit variable, hence I classify it as a HRHR card. Yes I know, the whole, you would have drawn the card anyways. But my problem is, what could I otherwise be doing with that mana on turn 6? Will the payoff in the short run be worth the turn I took to cast it or am I better off making a play where I know for sure how it will help stabilize the board? I go for the latter, hence I cut this. Also, the deck has enough ways of generating card advantage, so it’s not like I’m really lacking in that department.
6+ MANA BOMBS
Terastrodon – A HRHR card coming off of a turn 4 Natural Order (just watch some of Wingspan’s videos to see what I mean by high risk). However, the reason I cut this is because, outside of a turn 4 Natural Order, I don’t really want to play this. I can already deal with non-creature threats comfortably, and I never really want to blow up my own lands for more creatures, since I always seem to have something to do with my mana, given the engine of this deck.
Soul of the Harvest/Primodial Sage – Card draw on a stick. For obvious reasons I use Soul over Sage. I almost used a Sage in addition to the Soul, but the deck already has enough card draw, and I rarely find myself going for this with Natural Order. Untapping with this and playing a couple creatures is usually enough card advantage to win games, and trample can be nice.
Gaea’s Revenge – Haste and protection makes it a nice target for Natural Order. Not much else to say, great card. Only downside is that it doesn’t have synergy with Wild Pair, if you’re running that.
Pelakka Wurm/Elderscale Wurm – Gain 7 with Pelakka and draw a card when it dies. Agianst Goblins/Burn, Natural Ordering this up is pretty much an auto-win. Both wurms are 3 turn clocks and have trample, so why didn’t I include Elderscale? 2 Reasons. First, Pelakka gains me 7 life no matter what. Elderscale will only gain you life if you have less than 7, and you will always gain less than 7 life. Second, if your opponent Murders Elderscale, you have nothing to show for it. At least with Pelakka, you get to recover a card. Also, this deck has enough life gain options where it’s protection effect generally wouldn’t be any better against Goblins/Burn than just gaining a buttload of life.